Crushed green glass spills from a crate like a magical substance while the color echoes in the painted palms behind a confident young man wielding a pool cue in this sculptural installation by Atlanta artist Radcliffe Bailey. Is there an alchemy in the game of pool for this player? (At Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea through June 11th.)
Josh Kline’s stunning new show at Lower East Side gallery 47 Canal imagines a world in which technological advances have created mass unemployment. Carts with bottles and cans rendered in flesh tones suggest a sinister equivalence between recyclables and bodies that have been rendered redundant by ‘progress.’ (Through June 12th).
Abraham Lincoln’s vision for the U.S. literally explodes from his eyes in Brian Tolle’s sculpture of Lincoln with the text from his inaugural addresses bursting in red, white and blue from his eyes. The sculpture is part of a show featuring U.S. presidents from Washington to Obama with attributes that relate to their roles in the country’s history. (At CRG Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 12th).
Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is known for paintings that evoke memories. Here, cars reflected in the canals of the Dutch town of Ridderkerk are based on Polaroids taken by the artist. A solid stone bridge meets the evocative green-tinged murk of the canal, recalling moments of leisure spent pondering the water from the land. (At David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea through June 25th).
Though William Bailey’s serene still life arrangements share subject matter with Giorgio Morandi’s paintings of bottles, jars and vases, their contours are perfectly complete and clear, achieving comparative gravity and a sense of permanence. Still, Bailey’s objects embody a sense of apartness that makes them captivating. (At Betty Cunningham Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 11th).
Jocelyn Hobbie’s imaginary female figure is one step away from dissolving into the patterns that clothe and surround her; even her hair resembles wavy ribbons more than real locks. In the midst of all this visual input, the woman is a cipher, her far-away look suggesting she is only present physically. (At Fredericks & Freiser Gallery through June 18th).
Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in Chelsea aims to prove that iconic Pop artist Tom Wesselman was not only a pioneer of pop culture imagery, but a technical innovator, from collaging billboard cutouts onto canvas to molding plastic paintings. Here, Smoker reminds us that Wesselman also used shaped canvases to isolate forms that here, make supposedly seductive lips look troubling. (In Chelsea through May 28th).
Can the grandeur of the Yosemite landscape be captured on a small screen? David Hockney gives it a good shot, to luminous effect in his printed iPad drawings, now on view at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street location in Chelsea. (Through June 18th).
‘Perhappiness,’ a one word poem by Brazilian poet Paulo Leminsky, borrowed as the title of painter/musician Luiz Zerbini’s first solo show in New York, perfectly embodies the artist’s upbeat experimentation. Here, rocks that look like abstract paintings, pools of water crafted from lines of color and nests that resemble creative architecture are an homage to the inspiration of nature. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co in Chelsea through June 4th.)
If everyone could see inside your head right now, what thoughts would be laid bare? Amy Culter’s incredible cross section shows one woman’s mental map as a series of bizarre dreams, from a scary, hostage-holding snowman to the hilarious notion that our teeth are just the caps worn by a team of ladies nestled shoulder to shoulder in our jaws. (At Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects in Chelsea through June 30th).
The biggest show in town – literally – starts with a fifty-foot long walk between two thirteen foot high steel plates. Then it’s into a slightly disorienting and unexpected labyrinth of open and constricted spaces that challenge viewers to take the measure of Richard Serra’s NJ-1 with our own bodies. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 522 West 21st Street location through July 29th).
Known for photographing freeze dried flowers as he explodes them and liquid pigment as it is blasted by sound from a speaker, German artist Martin Klimas has come up with another way to make merge sound and art in a new body of work at Foley Gallery. The ‘Pure Tones’ series involves a frequency generator and still water, which is disturbed in surprisingly beautiful patterns, as evidenced by this grid of surfaces. (On the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Aaron Siskind’s 1954 photographs of high divers leaping into Lake Michigan are included in Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s engaging group show ‘Songs and the Sky’ as an example of the artists’ desire to align his images with music, ‘…in terms of rhythm and repetitions that can be expressed visually.” The gallery takes the connection a step further by actually pairing the photos with sound; in Siskind’s case with a selection by John Cage: 44 Harmonies from Apartment House – 1776 and Cheap Imitation. (In Chelsea through June 18th).
A foam couch, a broken glass table and lamps made of driftwood define young New York artist Jessi Reaves’ slacker design aesthetic in furniture art now on view at Bridget Donahue. Here, plywood, foam and driftwood create a giant letter ‘O’ which is simultaneously a seat, shelving and an opportunity to experience an ‘Oh…’ moment while discovering Reaves’ forays into unfinish. (On the Lower East Side through June 5th).
Press images of 1920s movie stars inspired Cindy Sherman’s latest body of work – photos of women who have aged out of the young starlet role but who still wear cupid lips, smoky eye shadow and wistful expressions. (At Metro Pictures in Chelsea through June 11th).
Known for clever analogue photo manipulation, John Houck’s latest body of work adds painting to the mix. Houck paints around items borrowed from friends – here a mason jar – in successive arrangements, gradually building one composite photo that disrupts traditional picture space. (At On Stellar Rays on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Brooklyn-based artist Elizabeth Ferry takes fuzzy dice to a new level with these tactile plaster, paint and foam cubes, now on view at Bushwick’s Honey Ramka. (On view through May 15th).
Columbian artists Diego Alvarez and Maria Paula Alvarez treat wood as if it were paper in both meticulous lattices that mimic Bogota’s fencing and this cedar oak plywood sheet that drapes over a Plexiglas shelf like a piece of fabric. (At Magnan Metz Gallery through May 21st.)
Susie MacMurray’s stately ‘Medusa,’ dignifies the maligned mythological character by refashioning her imposing figure in a beautiful surface of tiny, interlocked copper rings. (At Chelsea’s Danese Corey Gallery through May 21st.)
Light up wall decorations, picture frames and clocks are the hosts for Chadwick Rantanen’s unusual art project, which takes the form of adaptors that allow one battery to be used in place of another. With adaptors in the form of bees sticking out the back of this clock, the device is forced to keep its kitschy face to the wall. Resistance to tackiness and artistic innovation become the subject matter. (At Essex Street through May 16th).
Vietnam-based artists The Propeller Group make a surprising connection between brass bands in New Orleans and Vietnam in a mesmerizing video created for the New Orleans biennial, Prospect 3. Here, a funeral band wades into the Mekong Delta, making an elaborate journey as they accompany the dead toward the afterlife. (At James Cohan Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 15th).
Titled ‘post-paintings,’ as if they’re pioneering a new art form after painting, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance’s wall sculptures are in fact made from 2 x 2” posts and cropped pictures from the New York Post newspaper. Colored like a quilt and featuring snippets of Post sports coverage, this piece evokes all-American pastimes. (At Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 16th).
Working between London and Botswana, American artist Chloe Sells shoots the natural beauty of the Okavango Swamps, then uses screens, overlays and hand painting in the darkroom to create unique prints with what the artist calls a ‘dreamy effect.’ (At Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea through June 11th).
Haim Steinbach’s appropriated Lion King illustration takes over the office wall at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pitting a powerful creature against box office power against the power of immersion in the color yellow. (In Chelsea through May 27th).
Lucas Blalock’s overt manipulation of this odd but banal scene begs the question of why anyone would want to represent chopped sausage at all, never mind as both a photo and a digital rendering. The effect is to put our minds between places –simultaneously in the digital realm and in a stranger’s kitchen. (At Ramiken Crucible on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
Water bottles, wiffle balls and even a laundry basket are the among the discarded items artist Marie Lorenz has fished out of New York’s waterways during her boat-journeys-as-art. Here, she has turned them into a ceramic mobile. (At Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 22nd).
German photographer Elisabeth Hase’s 1931 rooftop photo turns workers and pedestrians into doll-like figures while paralleling the unusual perspectives adopted by Russian avant-garde photographers. (At Robert Mann Gallery through May 7th).
Shot around the world from Peru to Greece, Yorgo Alexopoulos’ videos of the natural world are a low-key sublime, prompting appreciation of beautiful landscapes unblemished by mankind. (At Chelsea’s Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery through June 11th.)
Thousands of books with fake titles create a false and fun library at Pierogi Gallery, where a not-quite-homey feel is completed by Carol K. Brown’s editioned porcelain plate featuring a down-on-his-luck wanderer. (At Pierogi Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 8th).
John Chiara’s New York photos – shot with homemade cameras large enough to accommodate big sheets of negative photo paper – bring apocalyptic drama to the city streets. Here, a glowing Hearst Tower hovers menacingly behind a vulnerable-looking walkup as Chiara lends familiar buildings a new character. (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through May 21st).
Stay near the wall and the room is silent; approach the table and light sensors detect your presence, setting off a cascade of sound from an array of 72 bare speakers. The effect of Canadian sound artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s ‘Experiment in F# Minor’ is magical – a musical experience created for us to create. (In Chelsea at Luhring Augustine Gallery through June 11th).
